Lufthansa cancels flights as crew stage second strike

Lufthansa has cancelled about 300 flights as cabin staff staged another day of industrial action at three of Germany's biggest airports.

Strike action called by the UFO union was under way at Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin airports.

Lufthansa cancelled short and medium-haul flights but also services to and from Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Beijing and Mexico City.

UFO and Lufthansa have been in dispute over pay and working conditions.

Workers held a day-long strike last Friday. The UFO union is seeking a pay increase of 5% for cabin staff for 15 months starting from January this year. The union said there had been no pay increases for three years.

It also wants guarantees that Lufthansa will not outsource jobs and use more temporary workers, as it has done in Berlin.

Lufthansa's latest offer was for a pay increase of about 3.5%.

The airline is undergoing a 1.5bn euro (£1.19bn) cost-cutting programme to offset rising fuel costs and tackle competition from low-cost and Gulf carriers.

It posted a 24% drop in second-quarter earnings to 229m euros from a year earlier. In May, Lufthansa announced it would axe 3,500 office jobs.

Lufthansa has about 19,000 cabin crew and the UFO union represents about two-thirds of them.